Category Archives: intro

I’m going to travel by bicycle for one or two years (as long as I have desire and some money).
Many people have a question: what have happened with this person that he wants to do it?

I don’t have an exact answer for this question. In my case I simply don’t know what I want to do with my life, but I know I like to travel and don’t care about the future. I don’t have any place I could call a home, I don’t have a wife and children, I’m 26 already, and I want to see as much as I can in my life. So, basically it means I can do whatever I want.

My first trip ended up in Vietnam when my pocket got empty after six months. I found a job in Hanoi and spent there almost one year. All this time I waited for a new trip impatiently and earned money.

Why bicycle?

In Vietnam I rode much by motorcycle and figured out that mainly enjoy only the riding itself, not the places where I ride. People and landscapes appear for a moment and after five minutes you only watch the road, your impressions have faded out. Motorcycle is way too fast for me (and by the way I haven’t got driving licence yet).
Bus/hitchhiking/etc.—even worse, because you can’t stop it.
Travelling on foot—it seems too slow for me, but I thought (and keep thinking) about this option.

Moreover I was always unlucky with bicycles. In the childhood I rode a small tubeless bicycle. But it couldn’t last forever, so probably when I was 7 I stopped riding that bicycle. Long time I didn’t own any bicycle. Then my mom found money (that time it was really hard, we spent more than her monthly salary), and I got an old Indian bicycle. Something became broken in that bicycle after every ride. The torture was stronger than joy. I’d bought a mountain bicycle when I became adult. But I didn’t have time for it, so I rode it for two times if I remember right.
Previous failures only increased my wish to use bicycle.

When I started reading which bicycle is better for long trips I’d figured out there aren’t many highly available touring bicycles. One of the obvious leaders was Surly Long Haul Trucker.

That time I used to live in Hanoi, and I had a luck to discover wonderful bicycle shop/workshop/just a lovely place The Hanoi Bicycle Collective and be introduced to his owner Guim Valls Teruel from Spain. Guim himself travelled by bicycle for a long time, but in Hanoi he’d met up with his future wife, they’d got a cute daughter and keep living in Hanoi. The full story sound totally incredible, google his name for it.
Thanks to Guim I’d bought my bicycle, moreover he gave me many useful advice and optimism. Thank you, Guim, we’ll meet up soon!

Do I have any predefined itinerary?

Sure I don’t!

Maybe I keep in my mind approximate route for the next week, but nothing more. Who knows what would happen tomorrow? Maybe I’ll meet another cyclist and we’ll decide to ride in the opposite direction. Or someone will complain me of visiting some city/country/planet. Or anything else. I hate plans, after all, if you’ve got a plan, then you have to follow it, such restrictions aren’t suitable for me. A finished plan means you’ve got some achievement and finally everything’s ended up. I don’t need any achievement, I don’t when I want to stop it (maybe never), so I refuse to have any long plans.